APRICITAS [ENG] || Johan Liebert || Monster

Chapter 27 - The Only One Name

The year 1997 grew old, giving way to a new one at the beginning of January 1998. That month, another event occurred that shocked all the people who knew Dr. Tenma.

The Japanese neurosurgeon, for an unknown reason, escaped from the prison and disappeared again without a trace. There were voices that if he had escaped, he must have really had something on his conscience and reasons to be wanted, but those who knew him well didn't believe in these reasons. In particular, those closest to him didn't believe in these accusations. Dr. Reichwein even had an interview on the subject with a lawyer hired by patients from a hospital in Dusseldorf. But they couldn't understand why Tenma had taken such a reckless step and exposed himself to even greater suspicion.

****

The iron, slightly rusty fence was flooded with a plethora of rose twigs with sharp spikes, wrapped around it on all sides. There was a slightly tilted gate in this fence, leading straight to the sleeping in winter garden, around the abandoned house. The trees stood bare, without even the tiniest leaf, swaying and crackling with the cold north wind blowing on them.

There was a path leading to the house, heavily overgrown with weeds and long unused by any human; it ended at the stairs leading straight to the front door.

The floor stretched out from them in the interior; old wooden planks formed a jigsaw puzzle leading through the corridors to the back room of the mansion.

The door to it was gently open, and the broken plaster around its structure proved that until recently it had been bricked up with an additional wall. The door didn't have a handle. The empty opening where it should have been, let an icy cold flow through it while hiding a secret so terrible, no one had ever dreamed of in the worst of nightmares.

The room was deserted, but not empty. A portrait of a young woman hung over the long-unused fireplace at the far end of the door.

Her long blonde hair was pulled loose back and she was dressed in a white gown, holding a bouquet of blood red roses in her hands. She was beautiful, but at the same time incredible sadness and resignation were imprinted on her face... Like a doll, seated on a chair, she sat stiffly ignoring the beauty of her surroundings.

The room was pierced by a gentle ray of sunlight, falling on the girl's face and slightly illuminating her blue eyes. Her lips parted imperceptibly at the gesture, plunging her into deep thought related to her memories.

"Mother of twins."

The whisper of these words drowned out all the prevailing peace. It spread throughout the room, settling on the damaged surfaces that remembered the past of this place. It penetrated into its deepest crevices.

The young woman slowly directed her steps towards the exit, taking in the atmosphere that prevailed here with all her soul. The sound of her footsteps and the crackle of old wood grew farther and farther away from the blonde in a white dress sitting on a chair, and the last thing her red roses saw, were long, dark brown strands of hair fading into the distance.

****

February started calmly in Prague. There was almost no snow at all, and during the day the temperature rose slightly above zero, thanks to which walking through the streets of the city was not difficult in any way. Smoke rose from tenement houses, suggesting that there was warmth inside them. However, not everyone spent their days at home. Between the buildings of tenement houses on one of the streets, systematic blows echoed, made with extraordinary energy.

There was a boy, dressed in a jacket and a pair of light gloves to protect his hands from the prevailing cold. But he was in the middle of the play so warming up that after a while he stopped, took off his gloves and put them in his pocket. After briefly judging that he wasn't too cold without them, he picked up the ball lying on the ground and began to bounce it again. He practiced furiously, and it was easy to see that he enjoyed it a lot.